Must-have movies: Spartacus (1960)

Majestic: Kirk Douglas as Spartacus

By Alastair Sooke

12:01AM BST 07 Apr 2006

Alastair Sooke reviews a classic that every film-lover will want to own

There is an apocryphal story about Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus. During the arduous, 167-day shoot, Tony Curtis, playing the effeminate slave-poet Antoninus, supposedly turned to Jean Simmons and said: "Who do I have to screw to get off this film?"

He must be glad that he stuck around. It's hard to conceive of a sword-and-sandals epic with greater sweep or grandeur than Spartacus. Kubrick later disowned the film, but his lofty version of Howard Fast's 1952 novel kicks its many imitators, including Ridley Scott's Gladiator (2000) and Wolfgang Petersen's insipid Troy (2004), into touch.

Yes, there are a number of anachronistic gaffes: you can spot some extras wearing wristwatches, for instance. But for majestic, mind-blowing sequences, you're spoilt for choice.

The early scenes in gladiator school are thrillingly brutal, as the gruff Marcellus (Charles McGraw) puts Spartacus and his fellow slaves through their paces in a regime every bit as dehumanising as that presided over by the pit-bull drill sergeant in Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket (1987).

When the slaves eventually crack and break out, their looting anarchy is offset by silver-tongued oratory in the Senate, where Laurence Olivier's imperious Crassus and Charles Laughton's bon vivant Gracchus slug it out for primacy over the republic. And when Crassus's legions vanquish the slave army at the end, the sinew-splitting battle is a feat of thunderous choreography, involving 10,000 well-marshalled extras.

Kirk Douglas gives a rugged performance as the "proud and rebellious" upstart Spartacus, but it is Peter Ustinov who steals the show. His obsequious slave trader, Lentulus Batiatus, tells Spartacus that he smells like a rhinoceros, before packing him off to gladiator school. Such acidly piquant offhand wit won Ustinov an Academy Award - as well as the honour of being the only actor to win an Oscar for a Kubrick film.